Mere Christianity

Life is complicated and just plain hard at times and as far as living a life on this Christian journey the difficulty level jumps up a few notches it seems. C.S. Lewis stated “Notice, too, their idea of God ‘making religion simple’; as if ‘religion’ were something God invented, and not His statement to us of certain quite unalterable facts about His own nature.”  God cares about relationship not religion, religion dictates routine or do’s and don’ts, while God yearns for us to be genuine and seek Him whole heartedly.  People somehow ask, “Well does it take all that?”, “Does life have to be this hard?”, “Why does God put me through this?” and this list goes on and on. There comes a point in life when your eyes become open and you have that experience with God and really understand his love for us. Similar to the Samaritan woman who had a one on one encounter with Jesus, she went to the well at a time when the other women would not see her. She was alone, hurt, tired of being tired, she was at the end of herself and Jesus asks her for water. Her life was never the same.  After an experience with the Father our lives shift, and things start to align. It’s   not that life is hard or difficult, life is a lesson, we all have a specific purpose and assignment. We over complicate our own lives with relationships that are way past the expiration date, jobs that we have outgrown, feeding into those thoughts the dumb devil planted, doubting what God says, etc. Instead of surrendering and submitting we over work trying to make things “right” and God wants us to stop and allow Him to be the I AM.

            I found another illustration to be a great depiction of our lives and how we operate. Before reading “Mere Christianity” I have said something similar, so it was interesting to see Lewis’s view. C.S. Lewis says, “The reason why it can never succeed is this. God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.” In today’s world cars run on other sources aside from petrol. But a car is to run on just that. Imagine someone putting carrots in their gas tank and they thinking the car will run. Pretty foolish. Why do we try to run off  of money, people, sex, drugs, anything other than our creator? We’re pretty foolish, just like the person with the carrot mobile. We were created to glorify God and to spread His truth, that is our job. Cars, money, houses, material things will flee, but Christ is forever. We must be intentional about seeking Christ and walking out what He has called of us.